FEST SCOOPS UP HUGE TURNOUT

John FlinkCHICAGO TRIBUNE

As a teenager growing up in Wildwood, Frank Nordin often made the trip east on Friday and Saturday nights to cruise in downtown Waukegan, a Lake County rite of passage that became known as "scooping the loop."

Downtown businesses that catered to the teens stayed open late and young people filled the streets of downtown to show off cars and meet friends.

But for Nordin, who now lives in Winthrop Harbor, scooping as a kid was never as much fun as it is now. Like many of the participants in this year's Scoop the Loop street festival, he finally has the car he wanted to use for scooping when he was still in high school.

"I didn't buy this to let it sit in the garage," Nordin said of his fuchsia 1957 Chevrolet Bel Air sedan, built the year after he was born. ". . . This is a great place to show it off."

This year's Scoop the Loop, which was held on Friday and Saturday in downtown Waukegan, will likely go down as a bigger success than last year's installment, which drew about 500 cars and 40,000 people, organizers said.

"All week, all I've been hearing is, `Are you going to Scoop the Loop this weekend?' " said Ald. Ray Vukovich, whose 4th Ward includes downtown.

Numbers are preliminary, but about 750 cars scooped on Friday, and so many cars came on Saturday that organizers turned potential scoopers away because there wasn't room, said Lou Moore, head of North Shore Rods Inc., the hot rod club that sponsors the event.

Weekend scooping died out in Waukegan in the 1970s. It was resurrected a few times in early "Scoop the Loop" festivals that were held intermittently until 1992.

But a recent push to revitalize downtown Waukegan has revived interest, and a new version of the event premiered last year.

"This is one of my favorite events not just because of the good business, but because everybody gets along so well," said Marla Cardenas, busily serving customers from the food booth representing her two downtown restaurants, Paradiso Perduto and Poppy's.

This is the key to Scoop the Loop's universal appeal in Waukegan, said Jack Potter, chairman of a group working to revitalize downtown. "This is a very culturally diverse town," Potter said. "We work together pretty well, and we go to school together pretty well, but we don't play together very often. This town is learning how to have fun together again."